Chương 75: Chapter 62 — “What Tuesday Found This Time”

Three days later, Tuesday found something different. The minion stopped at the eastern wall, where the first sigil had been scratched, and went very still and did not move for forty minutes. Vorrath felt it through him. Something had come in without triggering anything. It hadn't come through the ward, that was for certain, the ward was stronger now, Gerald had been at it for a week. Not through the boundary stones either. It came through June.

He was in her room before the thought finished, awareness filling every corner of the space, reading every temperature and shadow and displaced air. There was nothing wrong. June was at school. Her room was empty. Gerald in the wall. Speck somewhere. The normal fingerprints of a ten year old's bedroom: the drawings, the books, the notebooks, the desk and everything in it. He swept the room again. Then he found it. In her pencil case.

A thread, thin and long, attached to the outside of the pencil case so that would have been invisible to anything that wasn't looking specifically for it. A thread of the Ledger's attention, patient, following June consistently. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. They had been watching her for a long time. But that was not the whole of it. They already knew it was her. They had always known it was her. The thread was there for another reason.

It was there to find the bond's weakness, and learn where it was first joined. To know when to strike. He removed the thread. He was careful about it, not destroying it, which would announce that it had been found, but redirecting it, sending it out to wrap around Tuesday on his patrol, letting it think it was still watching what it was watching. Then he sat on the windowsill in June's empty room. He thought: seven days. He thought: they are not waiting to build something. They already have it.

They are waiting for the right moment to use it. He thought: what is the right moment. He thought about June's nightmare. About the bond. About ninety-nine percent. He thought: one percent. He thought: they are waiting for the bond to close completely. For it to reach one hundred percent. Because at one hundred percent, the bonded and the bound are not two things. They are one. And if you dissolve one, you dissolve both. They were not planning to take him. They were planning to take both of them. He sat very still.

Then he went downstairs, through the closet, down through all thirty-one floors to the threshold, and he worked faster than he had ever worked, and he worked until dawn. System: Bond Strength: 99%. Vorrath. We need to tell you something. We should have told you earlier. We're sorry. The one percent… we've been holding it. Not the Ledger. Us. We've been holding the last one percent because we knew what would happen when it closed and we were trying to give you time. We can't hold it much longer. It wants to close.

It's been wanting to close for weeks. When it does, and it will, it's not something you can stop, it's not something anyone can stop. When it closes, the Ledger's window opens. You have seven days. We're sorry we didn't tell you sooner. We thought you'd be further along. You're further along than we expected. We think you're ready. We think you have to be.